A sheet as it goes to the press

Send a printing works a file whose page is exactly the finished size and the job stops there. They cannot cut it: a blade never falls exactly where it should, and there is no colour past the line for it to land in. The sheet has to be larger than the page, and the file has to say by how much and where the finished edge really runs.

First the press sheet with its trim marks, ink running past the trim line. Then the same sheet cropped to the finished page, which is what reading software shows. Then a landscape page, made by stating a quarter turn clockwise on an upright sheet, which is how a very wide table gets printed without the sheet changing size.

What this example shows

  • The bleed, the line the blade follows, the useful content and the display area, all stated on one page.
  • Trim marks drawn outside that line, in the bleed.
  • A quarter turn declared on the page, rather than the drawing actually turned.

The source code, complete

Nothing is left out and nothing is simplified: this is the program exactly as it runs, for the developer who uses this library. The third is the description itself: a plain list of what the page has to say, which is what the service is sent.

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The document itself

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A sheet as it goes to the press, first page

Optimised, this document weighs 17.9 kB — at least 80 % lighter than most PDF generators would write it

The document is lighter than it was, and every page still looks exactly the same. See this document's row in the table of every example.

Examples near this one

Grey, screen and printing colours

Swatches in each of the three ways to say a colour — a grey as one number, a screen colour as three, a printing colour as four inks — each captioned with the instruction actually written into the file, and one mid-grey said three ways.

Colour the document defines

The same six colours said as bare numbers and then read through the screen profile the file carries, plus a ramp from light to dark and a sweep of measured hues: colour that still means the same thing on another screen and on a press.

Several plates at once, each at its own strength

Eight choices of plate among the four usual inks, each with the small program that shows it printed underneath, and two inks the press carries itself used together, every strength of one against every strength of the other.

A colour chart the drawing points into

A chart of house colours the file carries, and a drawing whose sixteen numbers are places in that chart rather than colours. The same drawing is shown twice through two charts: repainting a whole brand is one chart, not every drawing.

One hatch, laid down in any colour you like

One pattern that states no colour of its own, laid down in five colours and in five strengths of one press ink: the fill says what colour to lay it down in. Beside them, the same hatch made of patterns that carry their own colours, which is one pattern per colour.

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